Putting pressure on Crabtree

Gwen Knapp

Published
4:00 am PDT, Sunday, August 9, 2009

The 49ers' best leverage in their contract tussle with Michael Crabtree will not come from the Scarlet Letter treatment meted out to athletes and agents who dare challenge the financial structure of the NFL. The team, diligently trying to play down the significance of Crabtree's holdout, seems to grasp the fact that it gains nothing from public indignation about the young receiver.

The more doubts raised about his character, the more the 49ers lose face for picking him and ignoring the diva label that scared off other teams. The more scorn directed at Crabtree by fans, the fewer No. 15 jerseys the club will sell.

The team's strongest case, other than the implicit folly of holding out through an entire season in football, lies in Josh Morgan, Dominique Zeigler and Jason Hill. If they play well in Friday's preseason opener against Denver, Crabtree's agent, Eugene Parker, will be negotiating from a different position.

Instead of other draft picks, the point of comparison will become these young receivers, all of them promising, not diva-like, and millions cheaper than Crabtree. If they can knock some hubris out of the negotiations, they also should be able to siphon off some of Crabtree's attitude if he ever joins the roster.

"My coaches always told me I'm like a humbler T.O.," Morgan said. He does have some of Terrell Owens' intimidating power, and he probably has better hands.

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He and Zeigler have remarkably easygoing personalities. "They're always making little jokes, imitating other people," Hill said. "I'm usually the one just sitting there laughing."

Zeigler, so lithe he looks too young to be a pro, has no problem joking about his build, which would make other players defensive. Promoted from the practice squad last year, he is still finding his way in the league.

But by all reports, Zeigler has had an impressive camp. He carries a little attitude with him, a pair of tattoos on the backs of his calves, a D and a Z, his initials. "So the DBs can watch it ... when you're going into the end zone," he said.

Morgan has a hidden tattoo, a somber one that reminds him to enjoy every second of life. Reared in Washington, Morgan constantly lost peers to violence. At Virginia Tech, he was attending class in the building next door to the one where most people died during the massacre of 2007.

Last year, on the first day of training camp, Morgan learned that a dear friend, Theodore Miller, had been sitting on his motorcycle, talking to friends, when a car came by, out of control, and killed him.

"I went into the trainer's room and covered my head with a towel and cried for about 20 minutes," Morgan said. In the next two weeks, he got the tattoo on the underside of his left arm - a picture of the Capitol building with Theo's name and the dates of his birth and death.

It's hard to imagine Crabtree, despite all the concerns about his entourage and his holdout, joining this corps of receivers and being an insufferable brat. Add the influence of coach Mike Singletary plus future Hall of Famer Isaac Bruce, and the odds of bad behavior drop further.

Hill says both Bruce and Arnaz Battle have helped him mature as a player. The No. 1 lesson? "How to take care of your body," he said. Bruce, he said, has directed him and several other teammates to a chiropractor.

"He practically breaks you in two," Hill said.

As he talked, Hill made it clear that Battle had been just as much of a mentor. It didn't matter that, when Brandon Jones gets healthy or Crabtree arrives, Hill and Battle could be fighting for the last receiver's job on the roster.

Hill knew the line between business interests and being a respectful teammate. Right now, Crabtree sits on the business side, reaping scorn. Until he crosses over, we can't say how much he really deserves - in salary or indignation.

49ers Beat: Running back Frank Gore is having an excellent training camp. B3